Facts about Thomas Schelling

1. Jorgen Weibull — who does evolutionary game theory — chaired the committee this year.  Addendum: Here is the full list of wise men, thanks to Dennis Josefsson for the pointer.

2. If you wanted to see much of Tom, you had to agree to meet with him on Saturday mornings.  This was my preferred time too.

3. Before The Strategy of Conflict, game theory was for the most part an abstract desert.  It is not easy to find concrete economic propositions in von Neumann and Morgenstern or for that matter in Nash.  Tom brought game theory into the real world.  The magnitude of this shift is hard to appreciate from the vantage point of today.

4. Schelling’s early research was on open economy macroeconomics.

5. He loves Bach, and The Art of the Fugue in particular, most of all the Grigory Sokolov version.  This is indeed a desert island set of discs.